A terrified Long Island mom’s quick-thinking but devastatingly painful choice helped save the life of her toddler son over the summer — and eventually revealed the exceptionally rare condition he suffers from.

“Picture breathing through a milkshake straw, then breathing through a regular straw, then trying to breathe through a coffee straw,” Maria Carlin, 36, recently told The Post of her 4-year-old Jack’s harrowing experience in late July.

“We got to a point where I said to myself, ‘It doesn’t get higher-pitched. … I know what comes next.’ [His breathing] just stopped.”

Carlin, a nurse at North Shore University Hospital , got her stricken son — who was previously undiagnosed — into the car and began driving to the medical facility after he had spent the night crying in agony without

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